Metaphysics
by Iambeck
Summary: If you had a two-week glimpse into your future, could you handle it?
1. Prologue

So, Twitter listened to me rant about how I don't do chaptered work but I had this fic I've been sitting on since October of last year. So, I'm going full Eggplant (come find me on twitter pretty_dire to find out what that means) and posting. This fic is officially six months old and written before we even knew S2 was airing, but a lot of love and care went into it so...I hope it sees some light of day and someone enjoys it for what it is.

* * *

 **Prologue**

Her spine fuses with her seat, forcing her into some breathless choking fit, as the compression and force of their turbulent ricochet through time divests her lungs of oxygen.

She remembers this feeling.

The barrage of panic and disorientation hits as fast as the memory, and suddenly she's drowning in her car, clawing frantically at a jammed buckle in some visceral effort to reach the air pocket that's quickly dissipating with every sinking second. The groaning submerging of her car is the clang of C4'd metal, murky river water the leaden pressure against her sternum, and it all ignites her most guttural fear.

They might die today.

She can't see, blinded by the fear of malfunctioning CPU lights she's clamped her eyes shut, tethered to her team only by the ironclad grip of her fingers around theirs. Their sweat-slickened palms are married in the last vestiges of hope and it's the one thing that separates her from the solitary nature of her last near-death experience.

Although, this may not be as miraculous as her last.

Her meter has been running on empty lately and the universe owes her very little.

With every shuddering revolution of their endless loop, she feels her grip slip. The Lifeboat isn't going to make it. The atmosphere inside the machine is burning quickly, the friction against the unnavigable time loop building to such a crescendo that they'll surely combust. _One in a billion to impossible_. Their protocol message was probably buried under a ten storey parking lot in Pittsburgh and Jiya would be too late.

Some small, terrified part of her wonders if staying in 1754 and succumbing to smallpox, or dying in childbirth after being captured and pawned off to a French soldier would have been preferable as she feels a subduing throb blanket her brain, but she doesn't have the time to spend on that regret as the Lifeboat churns into a nauseating spin.

She tries to hold on but Rufus' hand slips from hers and there's an instinct to scream, but she's imprisoned by the pressure and the ribbed corseting caging her chest, and nothing fills the cabin but the shuddering racket of the Lifeboat being battered by intangible forces. It's a kaleidoscopic blur of technological failure and she uses every ounce of energy she has to grab onto Wyatt with two hands. She's straining, but she'll be damned if she's slipping again; she trusts he'll never let her go.

Lucy knows it hasn't worked.

They should have been home by now, stumbling from the hatch into a heap on the floor, kissing the concrete in that grateful buoyancy they felt after surviving The Alamo. Fourteen seconds, that's what Rufus had told her. It had never taken a pilot longer than fourteen seconds to navigate the Lifeboat or the Mothership home.

Until today.

Wyatt's fingers tighten in hers and for one, infinitesimal moment she forgets that they're spiralling into an inevitable combustion. In a hurricane of blaring alarms, self-imposed darkness and the smell of burning rubber, her skin against his is the only comfort that prevents her from giving into the druggy waves of unconsciousness.

"- _ucy_ "

It's a miracle she hears him at all over the jarring din of pelted metal.

She commits to the bravest act in her lifetime, and against all instinct, opens her eyes, because she'd be an absolute liar if she couldn't admit that she would rather go down swinging with Wyatt, rather than the darkness.

She wants to tell him that she doesn't want to die.

There's a moment where it all drowns out, the metallic crushing, the alarms, the heat - it's all slow-motion now, as though a second has become a minute and time doesn't function the way it has in her thirty-two years. She's heard that in moments of death the adrenal release forces the brain into a state of reminiscence, that your life flashes before your eyes in blinding succession. She'd been pulled from the river too soon for that, or too late depending on what day you asked her, but in the last few moments as she holds Wyatt's gaze the images begin to flutter.

 _Amy. Her mother. Henry Wallace. Sandcastles. Churchill the dog. Birthdays. Christmas. Prom. College. Benny & The Band. The Crash. Henry's death. Carolyn and cancer. Fighting for tenure. Snickers bars. Lincoln. Rufus. Ian Flemming. Wyatt. Yes, Ma'am._

She grits her teeth as the compression threatens to crush her, feeling utterly spent. The Lifeboat can't take many more revolutions without being anchored and they're in their final moments. She hopes they burn bright, brighter than the sun so someone, somewhere can awe in their final attempt to save humanity. 1754. 2016. She doesn't care who.

Wyatt's fingers unfurl in hers as they fight the impending unconsciousness. She feels a warm trickle stemming from her nose and catches two rubious trails pouring from Wyatt's before the darkness returns. Now, everything is silent. All she wants to do is just fall asleep.

 _Yes, ma'am. Bonnie & Clyde. Possibilities. Chocodiles. James Bond marathons. Rings. Christmases. Birthdays. White lace dress. Little toes. _

She dreams.


	2. Seismic Toss

Okay, I felt like the prologue needed a companion today...and I apologize for the ramblingness of it. Again, this was truly my first fic for this fandom that I never posted for various reasons and I still don't love it myself, but it's something in this weekly hiatus we have between episodes when current ideas are giving me hell. It doesn't feel...me, but it is what it is. Enjoy!

* * *

 **Chapter One: Seismic Toss**

It's as though she's being pulled from a warm bath, the muffled world of sound moving from distortion to clarity as Lucy reaches a surface of consciousness. The warm, lulling cocoon ebbs and in it's place comes a weary ache that builds to a stiff and painful throb all over her body.

 _Ouch._

The throb persists and painful pangs radiate from her temples, blazing an excruciating trail that causes her whole body to flinch. Every fibre of her being hurts, right down to her split ends and chewed nails. There's a part of Lucy that wants to scoff, because after the hell she's been through in whatever timeline she exists to worry about missing her last manicure, she remembers missing it at all.

In the time she's regained some sentience she's become aware of a weight over her left hand, calloused skin sanding over hers, a touch she can't decipher through the fog. It sends a warmth running up her arm and she shudders minutely from the goosing it causes her skin.

Everything seems so heightened; she truly wonders if this is the afterlife.

That is until she feels all of those screaming muscular fibers clench and spasm, reigniting another round of pain that throws her back under the surface of which she came.

 _So much for rest in peace._

* * *

 _"Lucy?"_

That infernal throbbing in her temples returns.

 _"Can you open your eyes?"_

She's channeling in and out of that distortion again, a frequency she just can't seem to tune quite right. Anything she discerns feels like a staticky, vinyl-pitched background noise to the hum of her unconsciousness.

The noise and the paralyzing ache all seem to knit together and threaten to combust. It's agitating. Her mouth is cottony and her eyelids feel as though they've been weighed down with lead.

 _"You're almost there, Lucy."_

One breath catches in her throat, and before she really connects body and mind her voice is out in the void.

" _Ouch_."

It's all she has energy for until she tracks the flicker of shadows behind her lids, baiting her to fight the overpowering blanket of exhaustion and weariness. Before she knows it she's blinking furiously, damning her persistence as a bright, sterile light blinds her. The groan she lets out as one of her hands comes to block out the offending beams is enough to tell anyone she's had enough.

A surge of panic wells in her gut as her vision begins to sharpen, bringing a renewed sense of clarity. She wants to sit up, pushes herself up, even, before she feels a steadying hand encourage her to lay back down. The resistance sobers her up quicker than anything else and she tracks the room on her back, taking in the sight of dark, concrete walls and two straight silver rails trapping her within the confines of a hospital bed.

She panics.

Any trace of her afterlife theory dissipates as she traces the IV protruding from the back of her hand, the thrumming of her heartbeat an erratic arrhythmia as the moments leading her to this replay in her mind.

 _1754\. The Lifeboat. C4. Rufus. One in a billion to impossible. Wyatt._

"Lucy, you're going to have to calm down for me," someone breaks through to her, the heavy weight of a hand coming to perch on her shoulder, gently encouraging her to remain on her back and stop the fight to be upright. There's a certain cadence to his voice that she's familiar with, something that consoles the zeniths of her panic, though it only lasts a second when she realizes he's not making himself familiar in the slightest. She can't see him, yet here she is at his mercy.

She wants the boys.

"Ru-fus," her lungs sputter, "Wy-att."

"They're close by," the voice promises, "you're all in the same state. Whatever happened…you've all taken a battering."

It's as though a ten-foot wave of relief has knocked her back. She inhales a shuddering breath before the tears fall, because nothing prepares her for the possibility that they'd survive. She doesn't know whether it's fate, or predetermination, damn, some stupid entity out in the universe that course-corrected them, but she thanks the holy hell out of it.

Her mantra of thanks is interrupted by a penlight and she attempts to bat it away as the light beams into her pupils, momentarily blinding her.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to co-operate with me a little," the man proffers up, face covered by a surgical mask,"we need to run a few tests."

She's not usually one for blind faith, it's taken her weeks to fall in line with Rufus and Wyatt, but some feeling deep in her gut makes her subdue a little and she resettles back into her pillow, shoulders slumped with the exhaustion of being on guard. The penlight returns and she tries not to wince as the light resets her throbbing back to a high nine.

"Okay, Lucy," she's prompted, "can you tell me what year it is?"

Her lips are cracked and dry, throat still scratchy and raw from whatever transpired on the Lifeboat, but she feels her voice break through in some dulled, husky tone.

"2016."

"And who do you work for, Lucy?"

"Ma -I'm a professor," she corrects herself in the nick of time, wary of the situation she finds herself in, "I teach history."

"With a specialization in time-travel courtesy of Mason Industries?"

Well then. She guesses there's no need for ambiguity. She mulls over whether she should be unnerved by the intelligence this person has on her but the fact that she's alive and recuperating puts a damper on wanting to light a fire under his ass.

He checks her pulse three times before setting her wrist down with a gentle pat, offering nothing more than the promise of rest before further observations in a few hours. The orders are for her to remain in bed as he moves to exit the room, leaving her with nothing but a heavy dose of confusion.

Though her mind is still whirring at the miraculousness of their impossible survival and bleary with migraine fatigue, she notices a figure pacing back and forth outside of her room. The shadow glides to and fro over the frosted glass of her paneled door, pacing, and her anxiety rockets . She's half hoping for Rufus or Wyatt to come bouldering in, demanding to free her or comfort her growing anxiety, but she also wants answers, and if her interaction with the doctor is anything to go by, she guesses they're in a similar boat.

Just as she feels the twinge of frustration threaten to bubble over the door pushes open and her visitor makes herself known.

And the world suddenly feels brighter.

" _Jiya_."

Lucy can't even begin to explain the rush of relief that barrels over her as Jiya comes to meet her at the end of her bed. For two people who have only known each other a mere few weeks, Lucy knows that Jiya is one of the good in the world, someone she can count on…and she's right; Jiya has brought them home.

She owes Jiya her life.

"Hi Lucy, thought you'd like to see a familiar face," she finally breaks after a few awed moments of silence, reminding Lucy that she and the boys weren't the only ones rocked by the near-death experience. There's a whole tender moment where nothing needs to be said, yet Lucy thinks that she wants nothing more than to just unload all of her gratuity on her and make her know, truly, how thankful she is to be able to sit up in bed and see a familiar face _not_ in the afterlife. If the IVs weren't so cumbersome she'd be flinging herself at Jiya in the way she flings herself at the boys after a close call.

"That was some ride, huh?"

Lucy bursts out into laughter, creating a rippling effect that ropes in Jiya and before long the room is full of their cackles and breathless heaving. Lucy can see why Rufus is so enamored with her and she hopes beyond hope that when they're out of this mess that he fights for her, or she promises to meddle in any way she can.

"Ow," Lucy hisses, her hand reaching for her temple as the migraine pulses again, bringing a little more gravity to the situation.

Jiya is at her side with a glass of water and some pain relief before she can blink and she accepts them blindly, knocking them back with one quick swig so she can get a head-start on managing the skull-splitting throb.

"Did we land on our heads?" Lucy groans as she falls back into her pillows.

"Something like that," Jiya replies, before she tugs the bedside railing and collapses it so she can perch on the edge of the mattress.

"That guy - the doctor, he said we all made it."

"You did, all three of you," Jiya confirms, "we locked onto your location at the last possible moment. We were surprised any of you survived, the Lifeboat is…well, it's a lot less of a lifeboat."

Lucy feels her heart sink at those words.

"It's destroyed? But Flynn's still out there and my sister -," Lucy begins to spiral into a panic until Jiya grabs her shoulders.

"Calm down," she encourages, "the Lifeboat and the Mothership are the _least_ of our worries right now, we'll get them back, but it's all pointless if you three are in body bags."

She knows Jiya is right but _goddamn_. This all feels one step forward and three steps back to her. Whatever efforts they make are thwarted by Flynn and that god-forsaken diary she apparently gave him. She loathes her future self a little. Jiya gives her this look that Lucy translates as ' _calm your ass_ ', and though she feels the anxiety from head to toe, she exhales a deep sigh and tries to settle the fear.

 _Remember what you're fighting for._

She concedes to the calm, "how long have I been out?"

She has no concept of time. She's sure by the telltale ache of her body that she was put through the ringer, and she worries how far of a lead Flynn's gained on the team since their near-death experience. She's worried he could have changed _everything_ by now.

Jiya glances down at her watch and does the math, "Almost three days, you're the last one."

"Rufus and Wyatt are already awake?" The fact that she'd been out for _three_ _days_ feels so secondary to that news.

"Rufus the day before last, Wyatt last night -"

"And Flynn? Has he jumped again? Wait - who won the French/Indian war?" Lucy cuts her off, frantically vying to know that information. They were alive, but at what cost? She still hasn't made the connection between Flynn and 1754, and honestly, that unnerves her to no end.

"History remains the same, Rufus and Wyatt confirmed the original timeline yesterday," Jiya assures.

"And at what cost?" Lucy collapses into her pillows again, crossing her arms over her chest at the thought of having to go home and be a model fiancée for someone she had met only three weeks prior. It seems that every butterfly effect of Flynn's meddling only slightly alters history, yet completely upends hers. She can't even fathom being part of the team Flynn claims they will be.

It all comes out in one rambling mess of emotion because she's never been one to hold back from her feelings.

"This is so…irritating! Do you know how awkward it is to be engaged to someone for seven years and to have never met them? Or to live with a mother who has no idea she had another daughter? Or that she was supposed to be sick as a dog with stage four lung cancer?" Lucy can feel her resolve crumbling, the toll of all of these complex tweaks of time starting to wear her down. She feels monumentally selfish in that moment, petulant even, because people like Wyatt and Amy have lost so much more than she has.

"Trust me," Jiya's hand comes to settle over Lucy's shin in an unexpected moment of comfort, "it's terrifying. Scrambling in the dark, never fully in control of your timelines, or knowing what one alteration in time will do to the fabric of the present…but the fear of loss is a path to the dark side; the more you fear the potential, the less energy you have for your present."

Lucy is stunned by this wisdom. There's something beautiful in that honest truth and she admires Jiya for the insight, though she barely expects it from her. Jiya's taken a seismic shift in tone since their last deployment and it baffles Lucy for the moment. The confidence, the calm, collected nature she's never really been able to compose in her flurry of clumsy, perfectionist disorientation.

"As much as I like Mason's speeches, you do them a little better," Lucy admits, a wan smile curling at the corners of her mouth while Jiya grins bashfully.

"Well, George Lucas did write part of the pep-talk, so I can't take full credit."

"Why don't we know each other better?" Lucy pouts a little, thinking about how little she knew about the shy, techie prodigy that Rufus couldn't stop talking about. In the boy's club of Mason Industries, she's been drowned by testosterone and it's nice to finally have an ally who doesn't expect her to man up, or to take everything on the chin. Someone who gives her answers and solves the unanswerable when others are quick to shut her out.

Lucy dares not to ask Jiya why her words seem to blanket the room in a quiet sadness and instead focuses on the folder nestled under Jiya's arm.

"New protocol," Jiya notices where Lucy's attention has settled and she seems thankful as she pulls the folder into view before splaying it across the bed, sifting through numerous pieces of paper with some indecipherable logic that Lucy can't grasp, "also part of the reason I'm here."

"Not just here for my sunny disposition?" Lucy teases, feeling a modicum more herself than the powerless, weakened corpse she'd woken up to.

Jiya's eyes roll, "you're as bad as the boys."

Lucy crinkles her nose at the thought of their behavior, she knows how they can be when things aren't in their control, their impatience and recklessly hot-headed ways. She's surprised Jiya hasn't admitted to throttling them yet.

"Are they driving you mad?"

"There might have been some friction, especially when they were told they'd have to stay a few days for observation," Jiya's smile tells all and Lucy shakes her head, because she's usually there to reign them in when they get bratty and remind them things could be _worse_ , "but marathons of Bond movies made the negotiating easier."

"Eugh," Lucy groans, thinking about the disaster of a movie franchise that now includes a version of herself that drops her pants for James Bond, "I'm sure they're getting a kick out of that."

"Personally, I would have bargained for Star Trek, but who am I to judge? Sexism and guns trump intergalactic genius," Jiya shrugs, earning another laugh from Lucy.

Her mind wanders a little then, wondering what the hell they're thinking and doing while trapped in a semi-hospital in the middle of what she assumes are the bowels of Mason Industries. She wonders if Rufus has finally found a Chocodile, or if Wyatt's managed to throw back a cold one; all _she_ can think about is kissing the ground but she knows they have their own vices. Either way, she's absolutely grateful she can think about Chocodiles, beer and the boys in the present. She'll never stop feeling thankful for that.

"Is your head feeling any better?" Jiya presses on, "only we have some more tests to run and I don't want to force you into anything unless you're feeling up to it. You've had a long day already."

"Any needles?" Lucy quips.

"None, cross my heart," Jiya promises.

Lucy thinks she can concede to that. She's had enough blood recently to last her a lifetime, and the feeling of her head being marked for death by the Shawnee tribe still unsettles her.

Jiya's friendly, quippy disposition gently morphs into something a little more business-like and Lucy feels herself straighten, bracing for any impact.

"While you were out a new protocol was established, which now demands that we record pre and post operational timelines, something Mason should have been doing from the beginning and storing in the Lifeboat for safekeeping. So, if you'll bear with me there might be some overlap of what we've already discussed, but hopefully, we can air it all out before dinner."

She wonders what other protocols have been put in place since this whole debacle, whether they're plotting the shifts for Amy's return. They've been scrambling in the dark and coming back to so many altered realities that she's not surprised they need to start recording their missions beyond debriefs with Agent Christopher and Mason.

Jiya's focus flips and Lucy finds herself answering to a systemized list of questions to determine their present-day timeline, the events of the jump and what knowledge she had of particular classified information. _What was the date of your present? What was the date of the jump? Who was the original jump team? Who authorized the jump? When was your start date with Mason Industries? How long has your contract been in effect?_

These are all things Lucy considers moot, but Jiya had assured it would be extensive and overlapping, so she tries to bite her tongue over the tediousness of it all. Jiya only relents once Lucy's stomach grumbles, loudly.

"We can stop here," Jiya laughs as Lucy's cheeks erupt in embarrassment, "you're a Snickers fan, right?"

"How do you kn-"

"Bedside drawer, thought you'd like some home comforts when you finally came around," Jiya slides off the bed, then reaches down for a quick hug which surprises Lucy again, though she decides to keep her mouth shut and embraces the comfort. She's a hugger after all.

"Thank you…for everything," Lucy utters as her arms encircle Jiya, "you saved our asses. I honestly thought our escape plan was buried under a Trump hotel."

"Wait, who's president?" Lucy recoils suddenly, gripping Jiya by her biceps.

"Don't make me tell you that," Jiya's face twists into a grimace, telling Lucy all she has to know.

Lucy lets out an expletive and she doesn't even feel the need to apologize.

"Those were the words echoed around the world, trust me. But that's the least of your worries, we're keeping you all in for observation for another couple of days, considering how long you were out and there will be an evaluation for your return to work. I'd suggest getting more rest but I'm sure as soon as my back's turned you three will be in some trust circle."

Lucy likes to think she's not that obvious, but apparently, her nonchalance isn't believable.

She allows herself five minutes after Jiya is gone before attempting to slip out of bed. All of her bones seem to creak and she hisses when her spine pops in a couple of places, feeling battered to her very core, but she needs to escape that room and see for herself what everyone has been promising her.

She drags along her IV pole after finding some sweatpants and a t-shirt, tracing the few directions Jiya had given her to the lounge. The sounds of heavy gunfire and old-timey quips are a dead giveaway as to what the guys have been entertaining themselves with while she's been unconscious. She slips into the room unnoticed, during a pretty heavy exchange of pistol firing and bazookas, earning her the chance to observe them in all of their hooting and hollering glory.

Rufus and Wyatt are holed up on a couch, a large projector screen in front of them flashing scenes of Sean Connery winding his way through a dank castle that mirrors their own operation. It's all an elaborate journey to save the slim, dark-haired woman cowering in an underground cell, her shirt strategically ripped across her bust.

Ian Fleming hasn't even bothered to change her name.

 _"Oh, Mr. Bond, I couldn't tell you how frightful it was in that castle. It's a relief now, to be here in your arms."_

 _"But what about your companions, Lucy? Aren't you a taken woman?"_

 _"For you? Never."_

 _"We all have our vices."_

"And this is why women protest for representational media now," Lucy huffs as Discount Lucy flings herself at Bond, the strategic rip in her shirt conveniently handy when it comes to Bond getting her naked.

"She's alive!" Rufus roars, and it's only moments before she's whirled up into clumsy, relieved embraces.

"Guys, IV…IV!" she hisses, slipping her hand from the wedge between Rufus and Wyatt before they pull away sheepishly.

Rufus' arms open to her and he gives her that smile that just makes her want to melt, she has to tamp down her own ten foot wall of emotion and curls into him to receive one of his strongest hugs yet, rivaling all past relief in the way he wraps her up and lingers a little longer than he would have before their eighteenth-century disaster.

"What happened to your eye?" she can't help but pry as they pull apart. Rufus reaches to finger the bandage laid over his brow, almost as though he's forgotten it exists when it takes him a moment to find it.

"Oh, fight with a joystick, apparently," Rufus chuckles, "they said I slammed into the control desk, woke up with the _mother_ of all migraines."

"Probably knocked his IQ down a few points too," Wyatt cajoles, earning him a shove from Rufus. Their laughter warms her soul and it's only moments before Wyatt is drawing her into his arms for his own show of relief. She can feel the change 1754 has had on them, the tenderness of their embraces, the squeezing her a little tighter in the way she's always been known for, the way Wyatt's hand slinks into her hair and cradles the base of her skull as his fingers gently sand and caress her scalp. She releases a pent-up sigh in one long breath as she feels the last dredges of tension wash away, eyes closing momentarily as she lets the images of a bloody-nosed Wyatt fade from memory.

They're closer. She can feel it in the depths of her soul. Whatever problems they were holding over each others' heads over the past few missions are forgiven, or for the time being at least.

Rufus and Wyatt are keen to update her on how they didn't end up becoming a fiery, meteoric crash of molten steel through Jiya's absolute genius. Rufus' pride beams through in his retelling as they squash onto the couch and Lucy shares a look with Wyatt, trading a knowing smile about the pilot's growing feelings for Jiya that are becoming less and less of a secret.

"…just death and millennium…wait, what's that look…"

"What look?" Wyatt coughs as they break it off, snapping their attention back to Rufus, though the whole charade is pointless because they've been caught.

Rufus raises his hands in defense,"I'm allowed to praise a female colleague, it's 2016. Feminism. The year of platonic friendship where a ring doesn't have to be exchanged if you admire someone."

"Seems like you're preaching to the choir," Wyatt struggles to keep a straight face, and Lucy knows he's enjoying Rufus' discomfort. Heck, they both have a bet on whether Rufus or Jiya will be the one to end the "platonic friendship", something Lucy cooked up while they were trailing across the Nevadan desert.

"Look, I wanted to marry her the moment she told me there was a Snickers in my drawer," Lucy shrugs, "If you need someone to give you a push…consider yourself pushed."

Wyatt sends her a knowing glare; her money is on Rufus and she's rocking the boat unfairly, "or, you know, wait it out a little, Jiya's a tough cookie," Wyatt tries to advise off-handedly, but Lucy can see right through him. She's got fifty dollars and a Snickers riding on this.

"I don't know," Rufus' tone dampens as he massages his fingertips over his uninjured brow, "she seems…disinterested? I don't even know why I'm talking about any of this with you two, but," he sighs, a little more dejected than Lucy had seen him lately, "doesn't she seem different?"

Wyatt dials down his teasing for the moment and gives an honest, "I don't know her that well." It's something Lucy resonates with, only Rufus has had a real relationship with Jiya since they became a team and she hasn't made much of an effort to gel with her except for their most recent interaction, but she believes there's some validity to Rufus' concern if he thinks there's something wrong.

"Maybe a little…friendlier?" Lucy hazards a guess, trying to be helpful, "but she's always been _friendly_."

"That's the thing, she can't even look me in the eye but she's friendlier with you? Did I miss something? Are you guys pissed with me too?"

"Dude," Wyatt breaks through, "I can't speak for Lucy, but that stunt you pulled back there? I owe you my life, I'm far from pissed. She's probably still feeling awkward about your date."

"Date? What date?" Lucy whips her head back towards Rufus.

Rufus looks jarred and turns to Wyatt with a scowl, "who told you?!"

"Halls talk," Wyatt shrugs, refusing to give up his source and Lucy chastises him with a slap on the knee.

"We just survived the unsurvivable, one _billion_ to impossible, can we just focus on that?" she tries to clear the air, glancing between the pair in some vain hope for amicability.

Rufus lets out a frustrated puff of air, sensing the awkwardness of his worry as he sinks further into the couch, "let's just drop it."

Lucy finds herself at a loss for what to say until he sees a distraction from the screen.

"We're missing the best bit," she gestures her thumb towards the projector screen as a distraction, some familiar dialogue registering with her, "Connery's about to dump me for a German frau." She hasn't admitted that she's watched _Weapon of Choice_ to anyone, but it's time to give up the jig when Connery literally shoves her character aside for a pouting, red-headed waitress.

"Ah, Luzia," Wyatt feigns excitement, "can't forget her bravery in Valar."

Lucy guffaws, "Couldn't have stopped the V2 without her martini shaking."

"She really is the heroine of this story," Rufus finally cracks, and Lucy knows they've got him back.

They're a team now.

* * *

After three matches of Yahtzee and another round of Bond, Lucy can't take the creeping cabin fever any longer and she wobbles to her feet with her IV, clutching the pole like a lifeline. They've all defied medical orders to remain rested and in bed, any and all advice falling on deaf ears as the team feels less and less fragile by the minute.

"Where are you going?" Wyatt asks, prying his eyes open from his half-attempt at a nap in the armchair.

"Locker room."

"You've only been conscious for two hours," Wyatt warns, sitting up a little straighter, and Lucy can sense the impending concern that'll undermine her determination.

"Just humor me," she says, not backing down, "I need to move or I'm going to atrophy and die on this couch, Rufus is already half-way there," she motions to the snoring pilot crumpled into the arm. She's energized with a new vitality and zest for life, having another near-death experience in her short life has put a lot of things into perspective and she refuses to waste away to any more sexist, pistol-driven movies if she can help it. That and her cell is probably chock-full of anxiety-ridden messages from her mother after three days of radio silence, not to mention her sudden fiancée she's supposedly spent the last seven years with. She's got a lot of damage control ahead of her.

"You're gonna get us in trouble," Wyatt finally concedes, unwilling to fight as they exit the lounge, and he's careful to guide her as she fights the IV pole through the door, almost tripping when she finally shoves it through.

"Woah there, Luce," he catches her before she trips over her own feet.

It slams into her like a wrecking ball as Wyatt curls an arm around her waist. It's not deja vu per se, the unrelenting wave of familiarity that washes over her at the way he says her name. It's something deeper than that. Something she has no words for. An idea that seems so absurd she can't even imagine bringing it up with him in fear of someone telling her she's knocked her head one too many times. Because, in some deep recess of her mind, this isn't the first time he's called her that, and yet she _knows_ it is.

"You okay there, Professor?" Wyatt is looking at her with a whole lot of concern.

"I'm…fine…" she eventually utters, pulling away from his hold.

 _Luce._

She has no idea why it's ticking away in her brain, playing over like some glitched mantra as they twist and wind down corridors lazily. They have no idea where they're going, but the sprawling walkways offer up plenty of track space to decompress from the tornado that was 1754. The silence is welcome at first, pierced only by the rattle of Lucy's pole as it knocks against the baseboard until she can see Wyatt glancing at her out of her peripheral.

He's been quiet around her, more so than usual and she chalks it down to the Lifeboat, which is an easy blame, but if she's being truthful she knows it's probably her own doing. Her eyes have been so focused on the cheap, industrial lino, to such a degree it would be awkward to reassert eye contact. It's been hard to look him in the eye after seeing him bloodied and lifeless against his seat, in a way that sickens her to her core and makes her nervous for the soldier, for his future. Life with Wyatt in it felt a lot less stable, a lot more fraught with the possibility of loss and sacrifice, a concern that plagued her every time they accepted a mission. Rufus was cautious and careful, a lot like her, but Wyatt - she believed he was the inspiration behind the _definition_ of reckless.

Maybe it was why it bothered her when he called her Luce. That felt personal and personal meant there had to be feelings, which took her right back to that drowning sense of fear. Amy was as personal as it could get and now she was lost to everyone and everything but her memory and a picture in a locket.

She loses control again, stumbling over her pole once more, forcing Wyatt to react and reach for her arm before she face-plants the floor.

"You're clumsy, but this is on another level, you sure you've not got anything on your mind, M'am?" he breaks the silence, pulling her up against him until the thwack to her ankle bone stops niggling at her. Her fingers clutch around his forearm, even once she's back on two feet and planted on the ground, she gives it a squeeze, the curve of a wan smile reaching the corner of her mouth in that half-tempered way of hers, "you can tell me, Lucy, to get over the hump…" His eyes are imploring now, forcing her to make a connection that she'd been avoiding. It feels like a great relief when she finally allows herself that moment. It throws her back to Nazi Germany and their talk in the bedroom, of heart to hearts and tightening ties in comrade solidarity. Of getting over the hump. Together.

She slides her hand up until she can curl it around the crook of his arm, then gently urges them forward until their feet are in a mutual rhythm before she finds the courage to reach deep and open Pandora's box.

"It was a lot, Wyatt," she admits somberly, swallowing back the lump in her throat, "to be in that situation again, to be right back in that car where everything felt like the last time. It's one thing to fear it every time I step into the Lifeboat, but to be trapped and imprisoned again…it felt closer to the end than drowning ever did…it made me see things, threw it all in my face, things that happened, things that didn't…it made me _regret."_

There's no end and no beginning to the endless thread of emotions coursing through her at the mere memory of it all, fragments swimming in her frontal lobe, taunting and baiting her to fall prey to the emotional significance of every joyous memory, of every tearful, gut-wrenching regret and fear…

"Do you know the one thing that just doesn't go away? Of all the things that just sits there burnt into my brain?" she prompts him.

He gives a shrug, tip-toeing around the idea of humor or sincerity, before settling on "me fried out of my brain?"

That earns him a glare.

"C'mon, it's probably funny in retrospect," he teases, injecting that little dab of humor she didn't know she needed.

"But it's not getting me over the hump, Wyatt…you were out before me, to me you were gone."

"Okay, terrible segue, tell me about the thing that doesn't go away," he changes the topic.

She pouts then, feeling less empowered than she had before the image of him knocked out in the Lifeboat.

"Luce," he nudges her, gently, "get over the hump."

The feeling is there in a flash. That moment before a balloon bursts, a memory teetering on the edge of being remembered, but nothing she can explain in any logical term. She half wants to tell him to quit it with the shortening, just so she can get some peace from the heap of suffocating thoughts, but there's another part of her that finds it truly endearing, comforting, even.

"You're gonna laugh," she warns.

"Would it really be that bad if I did?"

"Not…really," she concedes, "but for the record, I stated incredulity before you did when I brought it up."

Wyatt nods, "noted."

"I have this vague memory of a cake," she admits, flicking her eyes up at him to check his reaction and abort if he seems like he's making fun of her, but he's not, "it's…I'm trying to piece it all together, and I'm pretty sure it's one from Amy's birthday when we were little, but I feel like I made it? Recently? I can't even remember a cake from my own birthday, let alone my kid sister's. But it just sits there in the corner of my mind, like I need to remember to buy candles for it, or ice it or something…I think it's a memory but it feels like I'll walk into my house and it'll be there, waiting."

"You had some last thoughts and they were about cake?" Wyatt drawls out slowly, his tone even, but she can feel he's pushing down a peal of laughter.

"I know, I know," she waves it off, "it's stupid."

"Maybe it's not," Wyatt shrugs, giving her the benefit of the doubt, "it means something to you if it's bothering you. Just because it isn't some monster of a memory doesn't mean it's any less important than the ones that make you fear being at the end. You and Grandpa Sherwin would get on like a house on fire."

"He's a cake man?" Lucy smiles up at him.

"Coffee cake for his birthday every year," Wyatt puffs out his chest a little, something she notices happens every time his Grandpa is mentioned. It's the same way she boasts about Amy whenever she gets the chance.

She notices he's been rather quiet about his own experience on the Lifeboat, and she's the first person to accuse him of not talking, so she doesn't want to be the first one to push him on the topic, but she needs to know if it's different for him. Whether things like cake are just a horribly first-world, single-woman kind of worry in a world where others have a whole lot more to lose than she does.

She dares to ask him as they round another corner, closing in on the locker room.

"Did you see Jess?"

His bicep flinches under her fingers, and she thinks it's probably the wrong time or too off the cuff of her, and readies herself to apologize when he surprises her with an answer.

"In moments, yeah," he admits, flicking his eyes down in that avoidant lino trick, "but it's like you said…complicated and messy. I don't even know what I saw, but it's nothing like the movies."

She thinks she's had her fair share of prying for now as they reach the locker room, a familiar sight she's oddly glad to see. It feels weird to be wandering in borrowed clothes when hers are a few feet away.

"In and out," Wyatt orders as they enter, "or we're losing Bond privileges."

"Boohoo," Lucy scoffs.

They each find their respective locker and twist the combination locks, Lucy a little quicker off the mark when she opens up hers first.

"What the-"

"Hey, yours empty?" Wyatt turns around for confirmation, showcasing his empty locker across the room.

"Yeah," she huffs, more than annoyed, "everything, my clothes, cell, purse…what would someone even want with a Starbucks card?" she asks, about to slam the door shut when something catches her eye. She has to be careful with her cannula, but she manages to slide a scrap of paper stuck halfway down the seam of her locker and the one below it.

"Wyatt - dentist," she reads off the scrap, turning it over in inspection to find nothing else at all.

"Wyatt what?" the man in question sidles up to her, curious, and reaches for the scrap in her hand to scrutinize it.

"You need to go to the dentist, apparently."

"I went last month," Wyatt challenges her.

Lucy holds her hands up, "I'm just the messenger."

"Things feeling a bit off to you?" Wyatt turns to her then, looking for an ally in his thoughts. He's always been able to read a situation a little better than she has, that intangible sixth sense he must have picked up in the field.

She nods gently, biting her lip in thought, she's been worrying about the fact that they've left a piece of 2016 technology in 1754, and the major repercussions of that, "do you think it's about the recorder?" she mulls, feeling another seed of anxiety pit in her stomach.

"You never know with these people," Wyatt gruffs, then plants a hand at the base of her spine and urges her forward, "but someone needs to start giving us answers."

They're set in a resolute pace when the exit swings open two feet in front of them, bringing them to an immediate halt.

"Hey, Doc," Wyatt greets.

It's all a flurry of activity and a blur as Wyatt steps up in front of her and half-heartedly begins to explain the situation, why they're roaming around against orders, but Lucy doesn't have time for dramatics when the man in surgical scrubs is her fiancee.

"Noah?"

He lets out a deep sigh, a troubled tension settling at his jaw.

"You're not supposed to be in here," he tells them, eyes settling on Lucy.

"You know him," Wyatt looks at her over his shoulder, confusion weighing heavy on his brow.

The world feels completely upside down and twisted as she struggles to process the sight in front of her. The fiancee she never knew existed until one alteration in time, the fact that they were standing in the same industrial building that needed security clearance and that she _knew_ he didn't know about…or so he'd led her to believe. It's like someone is showing her the Lifeboat for the first time all over again and she doesn't know which reality is really hers.

She finds her voice after a few moments, anger the first emotion she can draw upon, absolutely exhausted with being the last to know, "was this just another lie?"

"It's complicated," Noah remains still.

"No, it's not," Lucy refutes, coming to stand beside Wyatt, unable to contain her usual calm, this all feels one step too far, "it's a simple, yes or no. But there's only one answer you can give me stood here in the middle of this place that doesn't make me look like an idiot. Was this the plan all along? Keep me in line by putting on this Truman show around me? Keep me working on preserving the past so I wouldn't come home to someone like you? Or are you just a planted spy? Couldn't get enough off the recorders from Rufus so this was the next best thing? That's abuse of my civil and human rights!"

"Lucy -"

"Don't Lucy her," Wyatt orders, joining the affront now, "give her some damn answers."

"And what happened to your face?" Lucy throws in for good measure, perturbed by the scar running across his right cheek. She can't fathom how any death or disturbance in 1754 could still leave her with a fiancee but throw an accident in for him to boot. Her brain feels like soup.

"It _is_ complicated, Lucy," Noah reiterates, a hand coming to rub over his face as he struggles with some internal decision on how to react, which only seems to add fuel to her ire, "but this isn't my place to explain, I'm just a doctor here."

"Then if you can't explain, take her to someone who can," Wyatt demands.

He does.

It's the last person they expect.

* * *

Lucy thinks back to those unwavering feelings she's been having since she was pulled from her coma, the moment right before the balloon bursts, the milliseconds before an explosion, it's the calm before the storm and she can feel it lapping at her heels as they sit around the debriefing room, the time-team against Jiya.

There have been few words and a lot of looks.

There's a sense that nobody really has any idea what to say.

And when the storm rolls in and crashes over them, she understands why.

"This isn't your present, it's 2025."


	3. Dark Matter

I'm calling this crack chapter because I wrote it so long ago...just, take it for what it is. You're only seeing this because of a dedicated group of Twitter trolls who caught wind of it. Specifically, courjenna, angellwings and awrighterinbriz so...thank them.

* * *

 **Chapter Two: Dark Matter**

 _"This isn't your present, it's 2025."_

Jiya's words detonate like a grenade, shattering every confidence he has in his conception of reality.

Six months of intensive training, of marksmanship, demolitions, breaching, combined skills, tradecraft and executive protection…and yet _nothing_ prepares Wyatt for this ambush. It all culminates into an explosive "fuck" as he launches himself from the table and finds himself pacing frantically, while Lucy and Rufus sit motionless in their seats. The adrenaline response runs right through him, forcing him into a state of hyper-alertness as his body responds to the shock.

He only has one mantra - get over the hump, or crack up.

Two options.

He really feels like cracking up.

"It's not possible," Rufus finally comes to his senses and wakens from the trance that the shock has plunged him into, eyes wide and mind whirring, "there's no forward loop or momentum, we've been studying it for decades. _Decades._ Unless we're in some eighties sci-fi trope, it's not possible."

There's his left hand, Wyatt thinks. Speaking sense through science. The amount of times he's had the wool pulled over his eyes by the various levels of command on these missions is incalculable. They think he's nothing but brawn with a yes sir, no sir mentality. Coupled with Rufus and Lucy he's one third of a formidable triangle, and where he falls in understanding, they pick up the slack. Not to mention, he's _Delta Force._

Who're they kidding?

But Jiya stands behind her claim, unmoved by the challenge, "not in your present, but in ours, it's _definitively_ possible."

He volleys his gaze back to Rufus, noting the way he straightens in his chair, ready to battle the notion. Brain against brain, half of which will go right over his and Lucy's heads and end up with Rufus in a round of hot seat when they're alone.

"The infrastructure was never built for forward momentum, even if I believed you in any timeline or universe, it'd be impossible to navigate the Lifeboat outside of its navigational belt. The technology couldn't even synchronize with your software, it'd be… prehistoric in comparison."

"The Apollo Guidance Computer was more basic than my toaster, but it still put man on the moon, Rufus. You of all people should know that," Jiya rebuts, and Wyatt can sense the determination radiating off of her. This was someone they'd trusted with their lives, a person they'd exalted back in the lounge for saving their asses, but that all fizzles when they're faced with the churning news of having taken the wrong direction home.

The room remains quiet as Jiya drops a computer tablet onto the table, offering up an open web-page and a search engine.

"The BBC, CNN, Washington Post -take your pick of news outlets, they're all still up and running, search it if you can't take my word for it," she offers, "you'll be hard-pressed to find a printed newspaper in Silicone Valley in this day and age."

No one takes the bait and he's unsure whether that's because they're not being bought, or whether they're too fearful of what they'll find. It's a thought that he's stolen from when he's distracted by the glint of Lucy's locket that she's clinging to as she fingers it absently.

She hasn't said a word, but she doesn't need to. Lucy wears her heart on her sleeve and Wyatt knows that underneath all of that deep-breathing and locket meditation, that her mind is running a mile a seriously wonders whether _she'll_ crack up this time. It's a toss-up on any given day about which one of them has had the last straw, but she's had a lot thrown onto her plate, what with the fiancé, the missing sister and the diary. All of that hiding and silent suffering she'd been doing holding onto that journal will all seem moot now that they're supposedly ahead of it. He realizes he owes her some kind of apology for icing her out back on the mission because if the feeling in his gut is anything to go by, he understands now why she was so close-lipped about Flynn.

"Aren't we supposed to combust, or lose a limb or something?" Lucy finds her voice, though Wyatt is struck by the raspiness of her tone and he realizes it's probably been a while since she's seen a doctor when she pinches the bridge of her nose, "we can't go to a timeline where we exist. Is this why it feels like someone's splitting my skull?"

All eyes lead to Jiya after that, it's a question he's not even dared to think in the time the bombshell has been dropped. Who knows what rules there are for forward travel, or what laws come into play when they go forwards instead of backwards…it makes him second guess that nosebleed he had after waking.

"All three of you suffered major concussions, any discomfort you feel will be a direct result of your landing," Jiya keeps to a vague line of answering, which does nothing to stamp out his growing impatience with the person who's supposed to be working _with_ them.

Wyatt can't hold it back much longer, he has a respect for Jiya, for what she did for them, but it's getting beyond the point that he can take what she's giving without losing patience, "that doesn't answer her question though, does it?" he replies, curtly.

Though Rufus' back is to him he can tell he's ruffling some feathers, making the guy uncomfortable, but no one is telling him to back off so he translates that as permission to go down the hard-line of questioning.

"What happened to that pilot who went back to a timeline where he existed, Rufus?" he takes the lead; if Jiya's going to hold back, he'll find a route to the truth, whether they're ready for it or not.

"He died."

"How long did that take? Rough estimate?" he feigns curiosity, throws out an inviting hand as a gesture for Rufus to answer. It's cocky and self-assured, but it's the only way he knows how to get through the ordeal without becoming the aggressive soldier he left behind in Syria.

"Thirty-two minutes," Rufus confirms, his shoulders dropping, it's more than clear where he's taking this and it pains him to be the harbinger of bad news, but they're going to find out sooner or later. It'll be the last detonation of their futuristic Blitz.

The atmosphere in the room shifts.

"We've been here three days," Wyatt turns to Jiya, arms folded as he delivers the checkmate, "we left 1754 thinking we'd scraped through, saved our asses…but we didn't even make it to 2025. Joke's on us, I guess."

"Someone erased our existence?" Lucy breathes out shakily, fingers trembling now as she twists the gold chain of her locket in an anxious vice grip.

Jiya looks at him imploringly, silently begging for him to derail the situation, but it's an inevitability and she's finally forced to play her hand, "that's a… sugar-coated way of putting it."

It's a revelation that makes him feel like he's been slugged with a baseball bat. There are suspicions and then there are downright nasty truths, and it doesn't sound like it's gone down well for them in the future. If he hasn't earned enough of a punch from that, watching Lucy silently scrub away tears rockets him back to the number one asshole position. Guilt is a feeling he's not dealt well with in a long time and there's an urge to leave, remove himself from the whole thing for the sake of Lucy and Rufus because his temper is volatile, but he knows he needs them now as much as he needs to soldier them through it.

Even Rufus is starting to lose his cool, "why would you bring us here?" the coder's tone is confused and laced with hurt, "it's not scientifically possible in _our_ timeline but it is in _yours_ , so the only way is to bring us in from this side...now we don't just have Flynn dragging us back to the past, but you're pulling us into the future! What the hell, Jiya?" he exasperates, "who knows what damage you're doing."

Jiya doesn't have a chance to respond, because Lucy is suddenly complaining about feeling nauseous and wobbling in her seat, spurning Wyatt into motion. Whatever fight Rufus and Jiya have is lost on him when he kneels at her feet. The pad of his thumb settles on the soft skin of her chin as he tilts it upwards, urging her to take deep breaths and breathe. The rest of the room is white noise as she becomes his operation, to pull her from that brink and get her over the hump like she'd done for him at The Alamo. Her eyes don't meet his instantly, but when she anchors herself they come to land on his, thanks emanating the moment she graces him with the ghost of a smile. It makes him feel like less of an asshole.

"We'll get back there," he promises her with words he has no way of knowing if they'll hold true, but ones that he vows to fight for, "we'll get back to our timeline and we'll beat whatever this is."

She nods, blinking away the salty welling of tears with a deep breath at his encouragement. She's always been a good soldier - at least when she's not being blackmailed for his release- and it bolsters the smile that he puts on for her.

"Guys," Jiya drops the formality, sounding a lot more like the Jiya they knew of the past and it draws his attention back to the table, "I can't even imagine what any of this feels like, to come here and find out what your fate is before you've even lived it? But I'm _not_ your enemy, before all of this…we were good friends, all of us…you trusted me."

"We just don't know what to believe anymore, Jiya," Wyatt comes to stand behind Lucy's chair, "one day we're being sequestered from Pendleton and lecture halls and then we're jumping through time in every direction, and paying with our lives, it's goddamn bull!"

It's a mixed bag of reactions around the table and Jiya's trying her best to hold it all together. Wyatt knows he could ease off a little more, but it's easier said than done when he's the one on the outside being asked to take a leap of faith. Future him may be tight with Jiya, but he's from a present where they're nothing but a quick "hey" crossing each other in the halls. It's a long leap to take on just faith.

Jiya pushes through, "I understand this is completely unprecedented. You're gonna have a lot of questions and we'll try our best to answer them for you, but this isn't Mason Industries pulling the strings, we can't give an authorization for a jump to the present...these were the orders left by you two," she looks over at him and Lucy, and his stomach flips.

There's something ominous in that disclosure.

"Us?" Lucy questions, "what about…"

There's no more probing when Lucy trails off, all too clear what that choice of words allude to.

"I died before them didn't I?" Rufus asks, but it's clear he's asking rhetorically. Wyatt's aware that Lucy's sucked in another gasp of shock and it fells them all for the moment.

The silence only serves to validate his question.

"And this is where it get's heartbreakingly difficult, for all of you, and we grappled with telling you, despite all of your wishes, because the future is malleable, but you made me swear on everything that was holy that I'd follow through. You're going to need a lot of time to process and adjust, and we agreed that I wouldn't be the one to tell you, which is why I have these."

She produces three envelopes from a folder on her lap under the table, one addressed for the three. Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus, and hands them over one by one. There's a pregnant pause as they all take a moment to inspect the letters, barely daring to hold them in their hands as though they burn red hot.

As he feels himself spiral, he hopes it's all one goddamn dream. A whack to the head that needed a few days to settle.

"It's my handwriting," Lucy chokes.

And he recognizes his.

 _Wyatt._

* * *

 _Wyatt…don't take it out on Lucy._

They're the words assaulting his brain like an axe to the head as he holds the letter crumpled in his fist; he'd been wrong back in the debriefing room, the last and final detonation would come from his own hand. A blast radius of eight years, the shrapnel thrown in his face with no time for cover.

It's an affront to every effort he claims to have made for Jess. A stinging, red-hot poker to his gut. It begs him to see the light in the dark, beyond the present and into a world that wasn't his yet, but all that does is throw him back to the car that night on February 11th.

His life wasn't supposed to go like this.

He hadn't given Lucy or Rufus any time for conference and found himself storming off with an unopened letter shoved into his back pocket the moment Jiya gives them privacy. The only time he's ever allowed someone to see the devastation wrought into him by coming home to a world without Jess is the day the telegram fails to materialize, and he's been damn careful never to let someone that close again. He stands by an eternal vow to devote every resource he has to finding her killer, and now that he's in bed with Mason, into bringing her back.

The weight of eight years burns hot in his palm, taunting him.

 _But I love her. You will love her._

He feels like an adulterer.

Lucy is not supposed to be his wife.

* * *

He doesn't expect to be ambushed in the men's changing room after running himself ragged on the treadmill. In fact, it's the one place he thinks he'll be left alone. It instantly puts him on guard when the door inches open at two am, the creak of a hinge that desperately needs to be oiled signaling Lucy's presence.

She peeks around the frame, a mess of puffy, red-rimmed eyes and tousled hair from where she's run her hands through it in that anchoring way she does to busy trembling hands. She's such a miserable sight that he can't even find it in himself to tell her he doesn't want to talk. So, with every twist to the new thorn in his side, he lets her join him on the bench and listens to the evening of her breaths as she gathers herself.

 _Wyatt…don't take it out on Lucy._

"I'm glad you're dressed," she says, gently, raising the sleeve of her sleep shirt to dab under her eyes. Her joke falls a little flat because he's being stubborn, refusing to give himself any slither of happiness or reprisal in Jess' honor.

Instead, he diverts the conversation, "Are you okay?"

"No."

"Then that makes two of us," his words come out hollow.

It's not that he's cold, or that he blames her for what they've been thrown into, but he can't hold her hand through this mess. Just sitting side-by-side while his adulterous words replay in his mind feels like a sin to him in that moment. It's how he found himself on the bench in the middle of the morning after running the distance it takes him to drive home.

Lucy respects that he's not there to be a crutch and keeps to herself, taking in nothing but his presence as they sit in muted silence. The letter is shoved in his pocket again in some vain attempt to keep it buried, he doesn't want anyone to witness his failure or his betrayal. A marriage to Lucy, no matter if it's eight or eighty years from now, validates the possibility that he'll never save Jess. That'll he'll stop fighting the fight at some point, because who can really find love and search for one lost?

Something has to give.

It irritates him on so many levels to come to a future like this. Not only for Jess who deserved better from him but for his friendship with Lucy. Outside of Pendleton where trust is an occupational requirement, she's the first person to truly see something beyond the solider; the person who is more than just the bastard who left his wife on the side of the road to die. Rufus is his brother in arms, but he has something deeper with Lucy, someone he can confide in when he's feeling the strain or needing a boot in the right direction.

In some ways, he _does_ blame being a believer in him, for trusting in him and letting him into those vulnerable moments. The little things that seem so innocuous and innocent to him now could be any one of the catalysts for the place they find themselves in eight years from their present. The way he calls her M'am even though he knows it annoys her, something that's slowly becoming more of an intimate joke the more he repeats it. The overruling need to buckle her in even though she probably knows how to by now, because the thought of being responsible for letting her come to harm eats away at him.

Things that he shouldn't blame her for because they're _his_ gestures.

That lump is hard to swallow.

"She never says your name," Lucy's voice pierces the silence, as they sit, staring at the row of lockers lined up in front of them, somberly, "so, for a moment," she shrugs, trying to find the right words with her bottom lip trapped under her front teeth, "I thought, maybe, it wasn't you. Maybe it was still Noah, maybe someone else…that you avoiding me was because it was my fault you don't exist here anymore, but then she says something, insults you, actually," her voice breaks to smile, "and then everything else just seemed crazy in comparison."

"What'd she called me?" he hangs up the quiet for a minute, tamping down the sting at finding interest.

"A reckless hot-head."

"You got me from that?" he snorts.

"Well, yeah…because I call you that in my head, all the time."

"Ouch."

"Hey, I'm sure you have worse for me; I saw your face the moment after I fell out of the window in DC," her voice is coaxing, encouraging him back into that teasing space.

He calls her a lot of things in his head, half of them in the spur of the moment when she's leaving him tied up on a wooden chair in the seventies, or meeting with Flynn behind his back, but there is one he uses even when she's not being a pain in the ass.

"Bossy know-it-all," he admits.

"Nothing I haven't heard before," she plays it off cool, "second graders had worse ones."

He can't tell if that's another insult or just commentary, but she doesn't seem to be looking for a reaction so he lets it slip. The two am talk is going further than he imagined he was ready for, but it's nice, even if it's painful, to have someone there to take his mind off the crazy train. It feels more like _them_ than the image of the unwanted marriage he'd been envisioning since opening his letter. It's almost as if he expected her to turn up in a white dress with a bridal bouquet, not the just-friends Lucy he knew a few hours before.

"I just…" she's struggling for words again, "I guess I came here to say sorry. I know you're only really in this for Jessica, like how I'm here for Amy…I can't imagine what it feels like to have all of this dropped into your lap, to have to deal with the idea of an us when a few days ago it was a case of working out a deal with Agent Christopher. I don't want you to think that I expect anything from you, that you have to see them or play up to any of this…I can deal with it by myself."

He looks straight at her then, surprised.

"You're going to see them?"

She nods, eyes welling, "she, um… said a lot of things, begged me. I feel like I owe it to her."

"You're a better person than me," he responds, which is enough of an answer to her olive branch. The slump of her shoulders isn't the worst response she could have, but it's enough to stir up the guilt in him again as he goes back to being the bitter jerk. He just can't commit to things like that when it's like Jiya said: the future is malleable. What they have here might not even be their future now that they've been exposed to it, so he doesn't feel awful for having the opinion he does. Their realities are always changing and he expects them to keep changing, especially in the favor of an event that transpired all those years ago in 2012.

"Like I said, do what you have to for Jessica. She's what you know," Lucy reaffirms her stance with some resolution, standing up from the bench, "they're fixing the Lifeboat as we speak, engineers say it'll probably be a week or two until we can travel back, but it's salvageable."

That's news he's actually glad to hear.

The plan he has for Jess' investigation will only take a small hit.

"That's good," he nods.

"Right, well…um, I'm gonna go, get some sleep, but can you do me a favor tomorrow?" she asks, like he isn't asking her to take a hit for him in what she'll be getting up to, "can you talk to Rufus? He's, um…mad at me too. Turns out I wrote his letter."

"He's probably not mad at you, Luce."

She has a strange reaction to that, flinching. He's observant enough to know it's not the first time, marking that as his last attempt to get away with dropping the extra syllable.

She collects herself after a few seconds.

"Well, whatever he is, he's not communicating with me and I know he needs a friend right now, could you just do that? For me?"

It's the least he can do, "sure."

She turns from him, ready to leave the way she came, the weight of the world saddled on her shoulders as she folds into herself and walks away. He's honestly ashamed that he can't offer her anything else, something to get her over the hump that in any other timeline he'd be more than willing to give, but he's just not there yet and he doesn't know if he ever will be now. Knowing what he knows puts every interaction with her under a microscope and he can't live like that, scrutinizing every kindness as some detonation that'll kickstart something to match the timeline he's in.

But it seems like he's a masochist after all because he can't help throwing her one last life-line.

"He mentions _you_ by name, just so you know," he offers, "so, whatever you're doing for her, I guess you're doing it for him too."

She's half out of the door, but a quiet "thanks" lets him know she heard it, followed by a final "night, Hot-head."

 _Night, Hot-head._

He has no idea where he's heard that before.

* * *

The next day, after little to no sleep, they're dragged into the briefing room with Jiya again. Wyatt is powering on fumes by this point and he's only half-listening as Jiya explains the engineering work being done on the Lifeboat. He knows cars, not giant eye-balls of space-like technology, so he attempts to get away with little to no attention paid, eyes drooping against the blanketing exhaustion.

"You're WHAT?"

Rufus' outburst slams him back to reality a few minutes later and he catches himself from falling out of his chair, not realizing he'd even closed his eyes. He blinks wildly, attempting to rid the sleep-blur from his eyes in order to reintegrate into the conversation and find out why Rufus is suddenly looking at him like he has three heads.

"Married, supposedly," Lucy's answer brings him back up to speed, and he suddenly wishes he was back to being half-unconscious. They've all been avoiding each other since the night before and it's no surprise Rufus is thrown in the deep end when someone makes mention of his apparent future marriage to their team member.

"There's no supposedly about it, you guys just celebrated your sixth anniversary, Rufus was your best man," Jiya informs them, a smile curling at the corner of her mouth, making no effort to make space for their discomfort this time, "surprised the whole team when you came back from 1967 as husband and wife."

 _Six years_. Wyatt can't even fathom that. He was married to Jessica for less, barely made it past their second anniversary when he took her to the Pelican Lounge to celebrate his graduation. Those thoughts just add more salt to his wounds. Every little extra detail only serves to undermine what he holds dear about Jess.

"Now that you've all had some time to process this timeline, I thought I'd bring you back for a full debrief. We, uh, left a lot of questions unanswered, mainly your purpose here and why we decided on this protocol," she passes over three identical manila folders, one for each of them, "these contain almost everything you need to know, events you vetted for approval, other events have been redacted. There are things your future selves deemed too variable to leave to chance, so please, understand when I say I can't give those answers."

"You're gonna _Memento_ us?" Rufus snorts.

Jiya ignores him and a projector screen whirrs to life behind her, "1754, this was the agreed extraction date on the timeline. While it's clear you all had some friction on the mission, you were an established team and the timeline hadn't been altered extensively -"

"Amy disappearing is pretty extensive, and I came home to a fiancée I've never met," Lucy rebuts, looking up from her folder, "surely I would have wanted a redo of the Hindenburg? Seems like an easy fix to a major problem if we're fixing a broken future. No one else's timelines were affected, it'd be an easy place to start."

Wyatt thinks that's a fair point.

"Easy for _you_ , Lucy," Jiya points out, almost expecting the argument, "but we all agreed, you were too green. It was your first mission, that and the fact that despite the Amy factor, we still have a stolen Mothership and no guarantee that we'd be able to retcon the Lifeboat from Mason. While our technology has advanced, we don't have the ability to pull the Lifeboat from its navigational belt, just like you said, Rufus."

"Then how…" Rufus looks meditative, mind whirring through the possibilities, "unless you needed Flynn to take out the Lifeboat so I'd cannibalize the nav system…I would, or, uh, future me would know that's what I'd do."

Lucy glances over at Wyatt, she looks as confused as he feels and it reminds him to take mental notes of what to hot-chair Rufus on after the brief, he gives her a shrug - _I don't know -_ and returns back to the folder, staring down at a picture of a C4'd Lifeboat.

"We needed the Lifeboat at a more basic, or a weakened level so I could override the system and pull it into a forward momentum. Taking you guys from a past to present direction, to a closed time-like curve that bent forwards in time, instead of back on itself. Luckily, we have all of the mission data stored so I could cinch the Lifeboat before 2016 Jiya navigated you home by the protocol."

"So you needed the Lifeboat to go kaboom, got it," Wyatt tries to hurry it along and he receives a warning glare from Lucy, "but if we're supposed to die, why are we here? Playing god? We've let other people die for less. Are we really that essential? Last I heard you had replacements for anyone who went against the grain."

"There's a partial redaction in that answer, but mainly, it's as simple as Mason Industries trusts you. There are a lot of factors that play into the future, but the fact of the matter is that this is something bigger than history and you three proved yourselves to be above the cause. Fighting a fight even the CIA, NSA and FBI couldn't control. You three hold a lot of credence in this place."

"Hard to believe considering we've not preserved history as it was at any point yet," Lucy huffs, "we barely made it out of 1754, almost died at The Alamo -"

"History will never be one hundred percent untainted when you throw a domestic terrorist into the mix and show up behind him, none of you should be in those timelines, so, really, you'll never be able to preserve it as it was. You make best with what you have."

"So how did we end up here, eight years in the future? Dead? Or is that _redacted_?" Wyatt pushes for answers.

"Someone betrayed you."

The room falls silent. Wyatt has experienced this before in Syria.

"Unfortunately, you chose to redact who," Jiya tells them, though Wyatt can read that it's not a decision she agrees with, "though I can tell you it was related to Rufus being…taken out…" she pauses for a breath, clearly disturbed by the surfacing memories, "you weren't supposed to be there and you weren't supposed to die," she turns to Rufus, "that wasn't supposed to be your destiny."

It's clearly an emotionally charged moment for Jiya and Rufus, prompting Wyatt to keep his head down and focus on the folder. They've had their fights, and he and Rufus have had their beef over the recordings for Rittenhouse, but there's never a moment he wants to hear about their failure to protect him. It's another slug in the gut.

Lucy dropping her head to her hands is a distraction, drawing him from the folder as he takes in the sight of her hidden in her palms. She's being as quiet as she can but he knows her well enough to know she's barely keeping it together.

"Those events spur a chain reaction of events that prompt you two," Jiya regains some composure and addresses them both, "to destroy the Mothership two months later. After a lot of debate, the consensus is to destroy the Lifeboat and close the time-travel loop, along with all of the plans and blueprints. But National security steps in and takes it to Area 51. Or so we assume, MI disbands for a year and then selectively rehire, you two are let loose and we all reset. A few years go by, they promote me within, MI focuses on other technology until the cycle repeats…with my new position comes a million dollar contract and an NDA to reboot Mason's Mothership. They wanted me to pilot it."

"Rittenhouse," Lucy breathes, "we didn't kill the source."

"Why didn't they kill us?" Wyatt asks her, "of all the people, we just destroyed the Mothership, we were out there for years after…"

"It's complicated, and you redacted part of the reasoning, but you were brought back in. Like I said, there was a certain credence around you. We optimized that, used it to follow Rittenhouse covertly, and then, one day, something changed…you guys came in with this," she motioned to the table, "whatever happened spooked you two so badly you wrote the letters, developed the 1754 protocol and made me promise to do everything in my power to bring you back if something ever happened to you. A week later you were also taken out."

"Jesus," Wyatt swallows, "how long have we been dead?"

"Four days. The protocol called for immediate retrieval."

"So we were taken out three days ago and asked to be retrieved immediately? Isn't that insane? This place has to be crawling with Rittenhouse spies!" Wyatt feels his anger burning.

"I've done the best I can with the time I had, we landed the Lifeboat off-base, with the nav system dismantled you came in incognito…I'm trying here, to do what you wanted."

"It just seems hasty, Jiya, they've gotta be vetting this place like the Pentagon after action like that, we couldn't have waited a week?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because every day we wait, Lottie and Teddy spend it as orphans."

There's that red-hot poker again.

"Lottie and Teddy?" Rufus asks, brows furrowed in confusion.

It's the one factor he can't think about in all of this, the one that wrings him from stem to stern.

Lucy's voice cracks, "our children."

* * *

He thinks he should be used to the silence by now. The past couple of days it's felt like a growing cancer, dividing them and holding them hostage. The new development is that no one particularly wants to be left alone, and they've all gravitated to one another, finding themselves planted on the couch, and in Rufus' case, lying on the floor staring at the ceiling.

It's been a heavy day.

The shrapnel of their future blitz is sprawled across the lounge coffee table, painstakingly trawled over by Lucy armed with a highlighter, in some manic rush to find sense in what they'd been told to re-alter. He suspects it was a way for her to feel in control and out of her sinking car, while also giving her the opportunity to avoid talking about whatever it is that they're in; he'd been unable to get word in edgeways while she was in historian mode, relegating himself to theorizing with Rufus, who was only half-listening and communicating in short, effortless grunts. Thus, silence. It's almost two hours later when Lucy throws her highlighter across the room and silently flops onto the couch, frustrated.

"Nine concrete alterations to nine separate jumps, and ten indeterminate. Places we haven't even _been_ to yet, and that's _if_ we go. None of them make sense, all non-chronological. No pattern. It's a blind wild goose chase," she reels off, flustered.

"Lucy," Rufus calls from the floor.

"What?"

"Do you ever just…shut off?"

Wyatt accidentally laughs out loud and he's punished with a disapproving glare from Lucy, but sometimes it's good to hear Rufus be a little franker. He patches up his mistake by passing Lucy a beer - a pity case from Jiya - and clinks her bottle with his.

"Here's to surviving to at _least_ 2025."

"Here, here!" Rufus snags his bottle from the table and sits up to drink, "let's pretend like you're not snuffed out and married with two ankle-biters."

It's supposed to roll off the tongue as a joke, Wyatt gets that, but Lucy doesn't seem to appreciate the sentiment and she drops her bottle onto the table, falling back into a state of silent detachment. They have moments like these, where their futures are forgotten and they can be themselves, untethered, but then something like _that_ throws them back under and the moment is fractured.

"Man," Rufus seems not to have noticed the tone change, "I had my suspicions about you two, but married with kids? Wasn't even on my radar, isn't that weird? I mean, we're all dead so it's weird, but you guys made people. You're parents."

"What suspicions?" Wyatt demands, a little harsher than he intended, but Rufus knew full well that he was only tied to these missions for Jess.

Rufus looks a bit sheepish, realizing his mistake, "you know what, doesn't even matter."

"No, go on, Rufus, tell me why you -"

"Wyatt, leave him alone," Lucy breaks them off, tired.

"No, I want to know what he sees that makes him think I come onto you?" he snaps at her.

He's pushing it.

"I didn't say it like that," Rufus defends his words, putting his own bottle of beer down now for good measure, "I'm sorry if I offended you."

"Well, maybe you should think before opening your mouth, Rufus. For the record, _we_ don't have kids," he gestures between himself and Lucy, "they exist in whatever ass-backwards timeline this is, but we're not parents. We're just ghosts of who their parents _used_ to be."

He doesn't have to look at Lucy to know he's hurt her, because he can feel it from where he's sat, but he's not apologizing. He shouldn't have to apologize for a timeline he was snatched into, one that's he's not a word in.

"That's a very…detached way of looking at it," Rufus dares to press on, glancing at Lucy and softening his expression, "I mean, I know my degree is in physics, not metaphysics, but scientifically they'd register as yours - doesn't that bother you?"

"Being dead bothers me," he deflects.

"Lucy?" Rufus engages her next, and he's seconds away from asking him to quit it.

She's quiet for a beat, thinking, but Wyatt knows Lucy and if he's right, he knows she's been internalizing it since she got her letter.

"All I know is that someone who sounds like me, who worries like me, who is everything that _is_ me but this one aspect made a life that's half me. How can it not bother me?" she admits, pensively.

"In two weeks we could be back and take one trip that flips this timeline on a dime," Wyatt finds himself digging a hole.

"Don't you think I know that?" Lucy snaps at him, fed up, "but right now they're here and they exist, so it's not a hypothetical. It's a reality, and in this reality they're alone."

Jiya's knock on the door comes at the worst possible time.

"Lucy? The car's ready."

Lucy gathers her belongings faster than he can protest.

"You're actually doing this?"

"I told you yesterday, you made it clear where you stand," she answers, avoiding looking at him while she snatches a pair of MI-loaned shoes from under the table.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?"

"Because it's what she wanted," Lucy pauses, and looks right at him, determination written all over her face, "she's just asking what I'd want someone to do for Amy, for any of you. I'm sorry if that's hard for you to hear, but you and I are different. I couldn't live with myself if I left this timeline without honoring her."

She doesn't wait for his rebuttal.

They exit without so much as a goodbye and he's left to pick up the pieces.

"Wow," Rufus sighs, "maybe I should be grateful I died first."

"Not funny," Wyatt snaps.

None of it is funny at all.

* * *

He waits it out for Lucy, an apology ready on his lips for the moment she walks through the door. Time crawls by, leaving him to sit and stew until he's forced to concede to the fact that she's not coming back. Being on the precipice of an unfinished fight always grates at him and tanks his mood, it's how it all ended with Jess - unfinished.

He doesn't know how to process any of this. He thought he could, thought he had the tools handed to him to overcome even the worst of outcomes…but it all feels lacking. He doesn't know how Lucy has the capacity to deal with it all, what she sees in herself to be as selfless as she's being.

His head is pounding from the strain and he throws back some pain relief and a sleeping pill provided to him by Noah, a thought that makes him snort when he thinks about the toes he's stepped on there.

Married.

To Lucy.

With kids.

It's a life he never envisioned after Jess, whether Mason interfered with the time-travel incentive or not. It's surreal as it is painful all in one go.

And the only person who truly understands it is eight years removed. Dead.

The only tangible evidence he was there at all is crumpled in his back pocket, like a discarded receipt.

He'll pull it out later, when he's sure the halls are empty, and give it another go. Do the Lucy thing and give it a second chance, try and understand the person he supposedly turned into. If not for him, for Lucy, who doesn't deserve his anger in something even she has no control over.

He'll try and see his perspective.

He'll try.

* * *

 _Wyatt,_

 _I'm keeping this short; Lucy's already written out something that makes more sense and puts everything into perspective. I just did this for you, because you know how you can be. You're a hot-head, man._

 _Don't take it out on Lucy. I know what headspace you were in back then and I know this isn't something you needed on your plate, but she's going to be there for you and if you're not careful, you're going to hurt her in ways you'll regret. It's hard to hear, hell, Jessica was everything, man, you know that, but so is Lucy. I know where you're at, with the ma'ams and the belts, the way you think about her or try your damnedest not to._

 _But I love her. You will love her. As your wife, the mother of your kids, she's the best thing to have ever come of this whole goddamn mess. You got a family. If there's one thing I need you to understand it's that this is something you wanted for the rest of your life. You were wasting away after Jess, living a life she'd give you hell for. I tried everything, don't you think Lucy would have let you get away with anything less? Sometimes that's still not enough, even time-machines have their limits._

 _I need you to consider this. The whole picture. Even if nothing alters for you and Jess, you'd be saving lives beyond hers. Rufus. Lucy. Your own. It'll sound damn selfish to consider saving yourself, but in doing that you secure a future for Lottie & Teddy. Grandpa Sherwin was there for you in ways that asshole wasn't, and you were lucky to have him, but they don't have a Grandpa Sherwin. _

_All I ask is that you think about it._

 _Give these people a chance._

 _Wyatt._

* * *

Told you. I was ridiculous writing this story.


End file.
